WASHINGTON – (Washington Insider Magazine) -As President Joe Biden prepared to move to Capitol Hill on Thursday to mobilize Congressional Democrats on election reform, Republican Leader Mitch McConnell retaliated on Wednesday, claiming he didn’t remember the guy who gave the fiery address on voting rights in Georgia the day before.
Biden’s address, according to McConnell, was “profoundly un-presidential.”
The Kentucky Republican took issue with Biden’s tying Republicans to Jim Crow-era legislation as a barrier to election reform now, when at least 19 GOP-led states have enacted laws restricting voting access in the last year, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
Biden had spoken out strongly the day before in Atlanta in support of modifying the Senate filibuster rule just so that Democrats could pass two major voting packages that had stalled in the Senate.
After paying his condolences in the Capitol Rotunda to the casket of former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, ABC News asked Biden if he had any reaction to Mitch McConnell’s ‘profoundly un-presidential’ remark.
Mitch McConnell is a friend, Biden replied.
Majority Leader Chuck Schumer had pledged that a vote on Democrats’ voting legislation will be held as soon as Wednesday.
The Democratic leader met with Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema on Tuesday night — another Politician who hasn’t decided to commit to a filibuster carveout but says she supports electoral reforms — and then with Manchin for about an hour on Wednesday morning as he tries to figure out how to get Biden’s agenda passed.
While recognizing that he is unlikely to get the legislation passed, Schumer claimed he wants to force a vote in order to put legislators on the record and show Americans — and history — where they stand on the subject that Democrats view crucial to democracy.
Given the significance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a recorded vote on those legislation may be considered as the first step toward another vote on modifying or removing the filibuster on the bills, which could fall on Monday.
While Biden, who has been in Congress for 36 years, has previously championed the filibuster, he has altered his mind on election reforms, stating Tuesday that a minority of congressmen should not be allowed to delay steps that affect all Americans’ voting rights.
